IBM Develops Program for Call Centers

IBM senior researcher Ashish Verma, left, explains his new speech software to Director IBM-India Research Lab, Daniel Dias, in New Delhi, India, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2006. IBM's India Research Lab has developed a Web-based technology for call centers that evaluates grammar, pronunciation, comprehension and other spoken-language skills, and provides detailed scores for each category. It uses especially adapted speech recognition software to score the pronunciation of passages and the stressing of syllables for individual words. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup) (Manish Swarup - AP)

Scores of Western firms routinely transfer back-office work to India, where wages are low and skilled workers are plentiful.

When the outsourcing boom got underway in the late 1990s, companies tried to ease Western fears of jobs moving offshore by training workers to use American and British accents. Many of them often used fake western names.

However, with resentment in the West waning, most companies are now discouraging their employees from faking accents or names. Instead, they are being asked to speak clearly and avoid accents.

IBM's solution could help these efforts, but it isn't clear if the company would commercialize the new technology.

EXL's Malik said IBM's tool could find a good market in India.

The need to develop the new technology was driven, in part, by IBM's own plans to expand and hire more people in India.

Over the next three years, it plans to invest $6 billion in India, making it a hub for its outsourcing business. It plans to hire more employees for all of its businesses, including Daksh eServices, an Indian call center company that employs more than 25,000 people and was acquired by IBM in 2004.

"English has become the common language of the business world, so the ability to communicate effectively in English can dictate success or failure in integrating into the global business environment," said Dan Dias, director of India Research Lab.